A National Emergency Library to Provide Digitized Books
blog.archive.org
blog.archive.org
The new initiative is bold both because it meets an urgent, unprecedented need—providing books to millions of people who are locked down and cannot go to libraries—and because it seems to be taking significant legal risks for the greater good. The announcement at archive.org links to a document [1] that in turn links to some attempts at legal justifications for the move. I'll let others weigh the merits of those arguments. I suspect, though, that if major publishers and other deep-pocketed copyright holders tried to contest it the Archive would have a difficult case on its hands.
[1] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vkl3RX4CzpRTQsoG1tsdHC0f...
“Ubiquitous access to open digital content has long been an important goal for MIT and MIT Libraries. Learning and research depend on it.”
Maybe Bourg should recall back in 2012 how his library aided and abetted the Secret Service's plan to have Aaron Swartz inappropriately charged under the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
As many readers of hacker news will recall, rather than serve time in a federal penitentiary for his brave act of civil disobedience, Swartz sadly chose in January 2013 to take his own life instead.
Swartz then became a martyr for the cause of "ubiquitous open access to digital content" ... rather than just "ubiquitous access to [already] open digital content." As a result, he would have been a much better spokesperson for the cause of "ubiquitous access" than a phony like Chris Bourg.
Swartz is today rightly regarded as one of the heroes of the 21st century civil rights movement. Bourg, on the other hand, is just another overpaid university administrator who collects a large (and largely undeserved) salary that has helped put millions of American college students into several trillion dollars worth of student debt ... which several presidential candidates now want taxpayers to bail out!
Bourg should also check in with MIT police to find out how often they are called into the library (post Swartz' arrest) to threaten members of the general public with arrest for the crime of using his library computer terminals "for more than hour."
Thankfully, those of us who are not on the academic dole now have libgen and scihub for our "learning and research."
JSTOR licensed content isn't legally MIT's to give away.
Normally, digital libraries have a limited number of "copies" (I suppose that's what they mean by "waitlist"). In this case, it seems like they suspended the limitation.
Since ebooks are licensed, and not transferable, ebook publishers set arbitrary license requirements and prices depending on whom they're selling to and for what purpose.
Some publishers will sell libraries the same book, under multiple license options/restrictions, charging different prices for different options.
Ebooks sold to libraries can be much more expensive than the same ebook sold on amazon or kobo.
The license criteria can also state that the book can only be lent out X times before the book must be re-purchased or re-licensed.
The argument is that physical books degrade and are not infinitely lendable, so these measures are intended to level the playing field.
That is an issue, but it exposes the flawed underpinnings of the capitalist copyright system as it interacts with the socialist library system.
Specifically, the result is that which books you have access to through libraries depends on where you live, whether you have access to a good university's libraries or whether you're in NYC or Seattle or Los Angeles. Sometimes it's completely random and some obscure library has stocked an ebook, it's just a matter of where someone's requested it and where that request has gotten to the top of the list somehow. This is absurd in the 21st century.
So, libraries are dying as a source of books. A lot of people who are into books have migrated to pirate ebook sites, or have ebook clubs or friends who share books among themselves. Libraries stock all the major popular fiction and nonfiction books, at least as ebooks, but they tend to have ridiculous wait lists. They can't buy enough copies initially, and then if the popularity ever dies down that's a sign that it's not worth reading anyway. Only popular books destined to become classics eventually stabilize at a point where they're worth reading and the waitlist isn't too bad... if you wait the months or years for it to get to that point. I don't know why anyone would put up with it except for pure entertainment reading (for instance, unless you're reading it for a book club, it doesn't matter if you wait for a year or two before you read the latest Oprah book club recommendation). And that's a small portion of a library's holdings; the vast majority are obscure books that aren't really that great, whether fiction or non-fiction. They just have them because of random requests. Popular books and unpopular fillers both crowd out obscure but potentially valuable books.
Trying to put the public domain classics on there one by one, and build a really nice reading experience.
Help and feedback welcome.
I’m looking more at reading online directly, having the book read to you, choosing your own fonts etc, and ultimately helping people write their own books.
Also, literally everyone already knows this, but SciHub for journal articles: https://sci-hub.tw (mirrors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub).
I mean it’s great for other things too but for that kind of dragnet research—damn is it nice.
[edit] oh and for when you’re just getting started and just need the introduction and sources from a representative work on a topic so you can track down the foundational works. Beats the hell out of waiting on inter-library loan when you just need to skim a few pages.
The collection is more than just textbooks; I saw at least one work of fiction. (Note that you might want such books for, say, an English class.)
My goal is to show my 5th grader how to checkout a book to his kindle eReader by himself..